Priority Area: Reimagining Policy

With support of Open Society Foundations, NSI partnered with researchers in thirteen national jurisdictions – Canada, the U.S., Peru, Chile, UK, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Israel, Australia, Zambia, South Africa, and India to apply the “Legal Capacity Inclusion Lens” developed by NSI to critically examine decision-making laws in each jurisdiction. Most were guardianship laws, but others were considered as well including marriage law, health care consent, and mental health law. An extensive report was published on the application of the lens to select federal and provincial/territorial sources of law in Canada[i] and a summary of findings on applying the methodology in the international study was also prepared.

This partnership with Inclusion Canada and community partners was undertaken to develop practical tools to assist community organizations in advancing supported decision making in policy and practice. The project resulted in a framework to guide transforming practice at the community level and tools to assess for community readiness to adopt supported decision making in practice. For more information see https://irisinstitute.ca/resource/the-equal-right-to-decide-tools-for-community-change/.

Through support from the Open Society Foundations, NSI developed an international network of experts and activists to share information and strategies for advancing local-to-national scale law, policy, and practice reforms. This network formed as “Legal Capacity International Network” and a new online platform is being launched to support and grow this network.

Through this project we partnered with the Centre for Legal Resources, Romania to provide advice on introducing the right to equality in legal capacity and provisions for supported decision making into law, policy, and practice. The initiative involved development of educational resources and training initiatives with civil society and government partners.

Over a series of initiatives NSI has developed a database application to supporting systematic analysis of law and policy regimes and how they structure possibilities for achieving equality, human rights, and inclusion for marginalized communities. To date, NSI has used PRIAA in analysing legal capacity (right to decide) policy regimes in Canada and Ukraine, accessible travel through federally regulated transportation, and interpretive supports for people with significant developmental, cognitive, and mental health disabilities.